Tutorial¶

In this page is explained how to build an AppImage for a simple Qt/Qml application. The tutorial is meant to be performed in a Ubuntu system where appimage-builder have been installed. Check the Installation guide for instructions. The application code can be found here.

Build Configuration¶

To pack an application as AppImage we need to configure it as it were to be installed in a regular GNU/Linux system. That implies using a Release configuration and setting as /usr as installation prefix. But instead of installing it to our root dir /, it’s going to be installed to AppDir. This directory will be used later to also deploy the application dependencies.

It’s recommended that the applications install procedure also deploys a desktop entry and a icon for the application, as in a regular installation. These resources will be used to infer the bundle metadata.

git clone https://www.opencode.net/azubieta/qt-appimage-template.git
cd qt-appimage-template
cmake . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
make install DESTDIR=AppDir

Recipe Generation¶

Once the application binaries are deployed to an AppDir we proceed to run appimage-builder --generate. This will proceed to read the application executable from the desktop entry and launch it. The application will shows up you can proceed to close it. In complex applications where external plugins are used it’s recommended to test all the features before closing, this will make sure that all runtime dependencies are identified.

Now the tool proceeds to confirm the bundle metadata. At this point you can customize the application id, name, icon, version, executable path, execution arguments and the target architecture.

? ID [Eg: com.example.app] : QtQuickControls2Application
? Application Name : Qt AppImage Template
? Icon : QtQuickControls2Application
? Version : latest
? Executable path relative to AppDir [usr/bin/app] : usr/bin/qt-appimage-template
? Arguments [Default: $@] : $@
? Architecture :  amd64

Once done the recipe is printed to the standard output and to a file named AppImageBuilder.yml

Filling the gaps¶

If you open the AppImageBuilder.yml file you will find along the apt source line configuration a set of empty key_url entries. Those cannot be resolved currently by the tool and must be filled manually.

Apt repositories key urls are usually located in the repository root. In the case of the Ubuntu official repositories and PPAs they can be found in the Ubuntu keyserver.

There is no need to set a key_url for each sourceline if it was set before as all the keys are added to the same keyring. Let’s remove all the empty key_url entries to make apt complain about the missing keys and run appimage-builder.

You will see something like this, check the line ends:

INFO:apt-get:Err:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates InRelease
INFO:apt-get:The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 3B4FE6ACC0B21F32

To make an ubuntu keyring url you can use the following snippet, replace <KEY ID> by the value that comes after the NO_PUBKEY in the appimage-builder output:

http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x<KEY ID>
http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x3B4FE6ACC0B21F32

Deploying dependencies¶

Run appimage-builder --skip-test --skip-appimage to deploy the dependencies into to AppDir. Notice we all intentionally skipping the test and AppImage generation steps. Once the process complete should have a working AppDir. To do a quick test you can run AppDir/AppRun and the application will show up.

Testing the AppDir¶

So far we should have a functional AppDir, which can be tested by running AppDir/AppRun. This will let’s know if the bundle will run on our system. To know if it will run on other systems we can make use of docker. Official docker images tend to be minimal so they are great to test our bundle.

appimage-builder provides the means to automate the test process. All that you have to do is specify the docker image to be used and the command to start the application. In case of an application with a graphical interface set use_host_x to True. This will share the host X11 server with the docker container.

The generated recipe already comes with a set of tests configured, to run then use:

appimage-builder --skip-build --skip-appimage

NOTE: If the docker images are not in your system it may take a while to download.

Once all the tests cases are completed successfully your AppDir is ready to be transformed into an AppImage.

Two important notes on testing inside docker:

use docker images that include X11 libraries when testing graphic applications, like the ones here.
applications with graphical interface will stay running after they are started, therefore you will have to manually close then to proceed with the next test case.

Bundling everything together¶

You have made and tested and AppDir containing your application binaries and it’s dependencies. The final step is to generate the AppImage as follows:

appimage-builder --skip-build --skip-test

What’s next¶

The next steps for you is to learn how to do AppImage Updates and AppImage Signing. You may also want to check the recipe specification Version: 1 (Draft) for advanced tuning.

Thanks for your interest!